The Canadian Investor - The Largest IPOs in History and Young Canadians Are Stressed About Money

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

In this episode of The Canadian Investor Podcast, Simon and Dan discuss some of the largest IPOs in history and whether 2026 could become a record-breaking year for new listings. They break down Saudi Aramco, Alibaba, Facebook, Uber, and Rivian, before looking ahead to potential mega-IPOs from SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic. They also explore whether investor demand can keep up with these massive valuations. The discussion then shifts to the Financial Planning Canada Financial Stress Index, highlighting how Canadians are feeling about money, rising living costs, retirement savings, debt, and the growing financial divide between younger and older generations. Finally, they examine a new TD report that downgraded Canada’s telecom sector. Simon and Dan discuss declining ARPU, increased competition from Freedom Mobile, dividend risks, and whether companies like BCE, Telus, and Rogers can adapt to a changing market. Tickers of stocks discussed: BCE, T, RCI.B, META, UBER, RIVN EY 2025 IPO Summary EY Q1 2026 IPO Summary FP Canada Financial Stress Index Subscribe to our Our New Youtube Channel! Check out our portfolio by going to Jointci.com Our Website Our New Youtube Channel! Canadian Investor Podcast Network Twitter: @cdn_investing Simon’s twitter: @Fiat_Iceberg Braden’s twitter: @BradoCapital Dan’s Twitter: @stocktrades_ca Want to learn more about Real Estate Investing? Check out the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast! Apple Podcast - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Spotify - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Web player - The Canadian Real Estate Investor Asset Allocation ETFs | BMO Global Asset Management Sign up for Fiscal.ai for free to get easy access to global stock coverage and powerful AI investing tools. Register for EQ Bank, the seamless digital banking experience with better rates and no nonsense.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Investing is simple, but don't confuse that with thinking it's easy. A stock is not just a ticker. At the end of the day, you have to remember that it's a business. Just my reminder to people who own cyclicals. Don't be surprised when there's a cycle. If there's uncertainty in the markets, there's going to be some great opportunities for investors. This has to be one of the biggest quarters I've seen from this company in quite some time.

Welcome back to the Canadian Investor podcast. I'm Simaubanaj. I'm back with Dan Kent. We're back for a regular episode. I think we have some fun topics here, switching it up a little bit. We'll be talking about some of the largest IPOs in history on the heel of SpaceX, about to, I think, probably break that record in terms of valuation. and from what I've seen, they seem to be set on going and IPOing probably around June is what the latest I've seen.

Yeah, I haven't really paid too much attention to this. I know Braden had brought it up a few weeks ago, but the valuation is quite high. I think you get, you get SpaceX, you get you get X in this too, don't you? Yeah, exactly. You get X and X-A-I and then I think speculation that eventually would just merge with Tesla. Yeah. So who knows? Elon's going to be, well, I mean, he's already a rich man, but he's going to be more rich.

Yeah, exactly. He's going to be filthy rich. Yeah, exactly. Richard. Then we'll talk about, I came across this financial planning Canada financial stress index. So it's a survey they do every year. Of course, it's for their publication. It's done by a liegee marketing.

So there is an angle of financial planning. But there's a lot of really interesting questions on. what they asked in the survey, the differences between age groups. So I think it'll be interesting to talk about that just to see how Canadians are feeling financially. And then you'll go over a TD report on telecom. So interesting to hear that. I know you talk to me a little bit about it. So I think it's a fun episode.

Like I said, switching things up a little bit, a bit more kind of big picture view. But I think it'll be fun topic. So let's start here with some of the largest IPOs in history. So I think you were surprised when we started chatting. Like, oh, I think you made an error here. Saudi Aramco at your number one. You said $1.7 trillion valuation at IPO in 2019. And they had raised around $26 billion.

But no, that is correct. It's still the largest IPO in terms of valuation. So it's been standing for quite a while. There's been some large ones. But you just have to think how massive Saudi Aramco is. and there were some pretty well-known names that went public. But even though they were big, they were not comparable to that. Yeah.

Yeah, I thought it was like a currency issue. That's what I was like, oh, man. No, no. Yeah. Yeah, all in USDA. So Saudi Aramco, number one, $1.7 trillion. And I use really the valuation because, of course, if you start looking up these rankings, a lot of the times they'll actually do it in terms of the amount of money that was raised.

So I'm really looking more at the valuation. valuation in terms of just the sheer size of the company. I think I prefer using that angle, but other people may use the actual funding that's acquired. The second one here is Alibaba. It comes at number two with an IPO valuation around $168 billion in 2014. Facebook had a valuation of around $104 billion when it IPO back in 2012. Rivian, the Electric Automaker, $77 billion. This is more recent in 2021.

And then you had Uber that had the evaluation around $82 billion when IPOed in 2019. And Uber is significantly larger now. I haven't. I haven't looked at it recently. Obviously, Facebook is much, much large. Doubleish. Yeah. Doubleish.

Okay. Yeah. Rivian not so much. It's, I mean, they IPOed at like the absolute. Yeah. Peak time to ever IPO in his. Probably a good time for them to IPO in terms of like raising money, though. That's always, that's a goal for an IPO, right?

Yeah. I owned Facebook. I bought it then, but I mean, back then, I never held anything for very long. And obviously, that was a massive mistake. But yeah, some huge IPOs. And I think it's going to be a pretty big year, obviously, SpaceX that we referenced earlier. I think it's targeting a valuation around $2 trillion at IPO. You also have rumors of Open AI and Entropic, the two big AI firms that are looking to IPO this year for context.

I think Braden had mentioned that. The most recent funding round for OpenAI was $850 billion valuation. And then Anthropics' latest round was valued at $380 billion a bit earlier in 2026. So those would be both massive IPOs. I think there is probably going to be some. decent amount of demand. There is some, I think, questions that I do have in terms of like, where is this new money coming from? Because at some point, like, you do wonder with these massive IPOs, depending on how much you're actually raising with their IPO, like, where, like, are they

targeting retail investors, institutional investors? Like, probably not. I feel like institutions that wanted to have a stake in those companies already do. So it makes me wonder where that money is coming from, are we going to see a rotation or just going to see that retail investors are just tapped out and they're going to not get as much traction as they would have hoped? I would say that would probably maybe correct for anything other than SpaceX, but I think it's just such a popular company. I mean, that is for the most part. That's kind of how IPO work.

The institutions get the money in far earlier and then retail eventually just kind of, you know, buys them at peak IPO prices usually. Like for the vast majority, they don't really work out all that well. These ones have, though. It's kept for maybe Rivian and Alibaba. Yeah, it makes you wonder, though, if they all three of them go and IPO this year, like, will money actually dry out by the last IPO? Is that's a for these companies?

Yeah, because it's so massive. Maybe not, but, you know, if you're the last one to IPO, especially in terms of the actual AI plays, maybe a lot of the money just goes into. SpaceX and OpenAI slash Antropic, whichever one comes first, and the last one kind of gets us crumbs. But I'm not sure. What is really interesting, though, is EY always comes out with some regular data on IPOs. They do it quarterly. I've done this before with Brita. I'm not sure if we've done it together just yet. No. This IPO report. So they do it as a yearly thing, but also quarterly. so you can really see the progress.

And they recently came out with a Q1 2026 update, and I'll go over the 2025 update. And it's interesting to see the shift in big part because of the geopolitics that we're seeing right now and the rapidly changing market conditions. So 2025 global IPO market saw a total of 1,293 IPOs last year that raised over 100. 172 billion in US dollars.

It was a 39% increase in the amount of money raised year over year. And it was an increase of 4% in the number of IPOs. Because, of course, depending how large the fundraising is, you can see an increase in money raise or you could see the number of IPOs and actually IPOs be flat or just slightly up. So that's why there's a discrepancy here. The Asia Pacific saw the largest share of global proceeds while the east. EMEIA, which is, I think Europe, Middle East, and Africa, I believe. Yeah, India, Africa.

Asia would be the- Asia, yeah. I think, yeah. But I don't know what the eye is. Yeah, anyway. I'm not quite sure. I'm going to say it's probably India. Saw the highest number of deals. Yeah.

The Americas led by the U.S. came in third. The U.S. still saw the most proceeds by a single country while India saw the most total number of IPOs. So, yeah, it would make sense that it is India there. In terms of sectors, industrial and technology were essentially tied in terms of the proceeds from IPOs in the past year at $37 and $36 billion, respectively. That was followed by health and life sciences, energy, financial services, and real estate. All of these were kind of grew between $16 and $20 billion in proceeds. The 2025 report had a optimistic view of 2026.

And spoiler alert, the. Q1-20206 update poured a little bit of cold water on that because they had this key phrase in the 2025 report reduced geopolitical tensions will be crucial for restoring investor confidence

alongside strong consumer help and robust labor markets that underpend the economic growth. I mean, not that they said it was necessarily going to be like all that better. It's mostly that it will be dependent on these variables. And pretty much none of them

every one of these is is bad. I mean, high tensions, consumer health is bad. Labor market is not good. So yeah. Yeah, exactly. So these are some of the things that are happening right now. So the Q1, 2026 update, IPOs are down 23% year over year, although they have raised a higher amount of money.

So that is interesting. So there's less IPOs, but they've been the ones that have been out have much higher average raise in terms of the proceeds that they got. That increased 36% you over a year to reach 41 billion, the amount of money raised. A fun fact that I got from the report, and you probably have no idea what this company is, bonus points if you do. The largest IPO so far this year in proceeds was the Czech ammunition manufacturer CSG, which raised 4.5 billion on the Amsterdam public markets. I think it's the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, if I remember correctly. I don't know this company. Shocking. It's interesting that such a large raise, but it's also

not super surprising that you have a defense company, defense contractor that is raising going to IPO. I didn't read, like I should have read a bit more into that one specifically, but I didn't want to hammer on on that one case. I would suppose that there was probably some, pretty strong demand here for this kind of IPO and this kind of geopolitical climate. The main takeaways is that investors still have interest for IPOs but are becoming picky. They're favoring companies with strong earning powers, clear market positioning, and strong growth prospect. They also mentioned that certain sectors are definitely more attractive to investors in terms

of IPO. Again, defense would be one that we just talked about here. tech is still pretty high up on there. I think industrial is doing well, but it really depends. So investors are really picky. Like I said, they want companies that are strong. They have strong earning power, strong growth prospects. They won't really buy up these like IPOs for non-profitable companies that don't really have a path to profitability.

So we'll have to see whether that holds through for an entropic or open AI. because those, that's the elephant in the room for those companies. And Braden said, oh, he thinks you're still going to be investor demand for that. I think history has shown us one thing, and the markets are incredibly consistent with that, is that at some point when the markets don't see the prospects of profitability, they get tired and they start dumping companies. I'm not saying it's going to happen for Anthropic and Open AI, but it always happens. There is a euphoria phase.

Sales are growing. But if you cannot see profits at some point, the market says, okay, enough with this, we're done pouring in money, funding your losses. We need to see a path to profitability. And you can just look throughout history. It is true time and time again. Yeah, I think for these AI names, even if money dries up, like I think you'll see a rotation. I think everybody is going to want to have a piece of these. It's just such a headline right now, these IPO names.

No, yeah, you're probably right. I'm probably wrong, but I mean, or I may be right in the right time frame. What I'm just saying is if you think at the tech bubble, if you think about 2021, 2020, 2020, 2021, at some point, you know, it could take several years. The market just gets fed up and just punishes these companies that are not profitable. Yeah, you eventually need to, I mean, Uber is a prime example. They were just burning through money when they first IPO, but now they've kind of flipped the script and, kind of turned into a cash cow, really tons of free cash. Well, most IPOs will, will not go this route. Most of them end up being kind of cash burners for quite a bit. When you get like big scale ones like this, it's a little different. I would imagine, I know there's probably no Canadian data on this,

but in this report, but it would have to be, I bet you the IPO market for metal companies. Yes, sword. Boomer. Yeah. And yeah, like a lot of those companies probably just taking advantage of raising capital and, you know, might not turn out all that well. But yeah, I don't know. It's going to be interesting. I'm kind of curious. I know Stripe has been kind of waiting the IPO for a very long time. I wonder.

Yeah, I feel like they pulled the trigger. Yeah. I don't know. I don't think it's that great of an environment for payment's company right now. Yeah. Yeah. I think they missed the boat. I'll be very honest.

Like you imagine 2021 if they did it? Yeah. Yeah. No, they would have crushed it. But if you think about it, right, like, okay. So you want to go IPO this year. So you're competing with SpaceX, potentially Open AI and Anthropic. Like at some point, there's no more money.

Plus payments, I think you have the Genius Act in the US and the fact that they're essentially legitimizing stable coins. And that could impact payments provider, like a Stripe, PayPal, you name it. I think they've missed the boat. I'll be very honest. They might go, but I think it'll be a lackluster IPO. I just think you're going to. see those AI plays just

gobble up any demand that there might be. Again, I still think the market at some point will demand that they become profitable, but that could be a year or two or three down the line. Yeah, I think if you're Stripe and you look at the lineup here, I think you probably push it out

because you would be so far down on the interest totem pole, I think, with all these, is that, yeah, probably not a good time. No, exactly. So I thought it was a fun little survey to do. We can look back maybe a couple times in the year just to see how things are progressing. I was just kind of interested to see, yeah, what was happening, especially with the Q1 update. It's actually pretty

good. It encompasses the conflict in Iran. So just to give us an idea of like what investors are looking in terms of IPO, thought it was pretty interesting to look at that. Having cash on hand is essential for any business. Traditional business accounts hit you with high fees while paying little to no interest on the cash you need for day-to-day operations. That was our experience, too, until we switched to the new EQ Bank business account. Now, every dollar earns high interest with no monthly fees and no minimum balance. You also get free everyday transactions like EFTs, bill payments, mobile check deposits, and 50 outgoing and 100 incoming free interarchy transfers. And to sign up, quick and fully online, no branch video.

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more than 50,000 Canadians plus and growing who are using the app every time I go on there I am shocked the engagement is amazing this is a really vibrant community that they're building and people share their portfolios their trades or investment ideas in real time and it's all built on the concept of transparency because brokerage accounts are linked and then once you link your brokerage account, you can get in-depth portfolio insights, track your dividends, and there's other stuff like learning, duolingo style education lessons that are completely free. You can search up Blossom social in the app store and join the community today. I'm on there. I encourage you go on there and follow me, search me up, some of the YouTubers and influencers and podcasters that you might know,

I bet you they're already on there. People are just on there talking, sharing their investment ideas, and using the analytics tools. So go ahead. Lawsome Social in the App Store, and I'll see you there. Now we'll shift over to the Financial Planning Canada Financial Stress Index, and I will put a link of the survey, and I'll put a link to the IPO insights from E.O.I as well in the show notes. So if you're interested in looking at that, make sure that you just look at the show notes.

You can look at it for yourself. But this was a fun one. I was looking at just to get the polls from a bit like what Canadians, are thinking about. So this survey was conducted between January 6th and January 15th. So this was before pretty much anything that we saw in terms of escalating conflict. I think at that point, though, we had seen the Venezuela extraction from, I think, and my Manduro, if I remember correctly. Yeah. Yeah, I think that was early January. It feels like a world win. It feels like it was a year ago. But again, it's funny because I just wanted to mention that because just keep that in mind

that sentiment may have shifted a little bit since then, but it's still a pretty recent survey, and it was just published, I think, last month. So there's a couple of questions I wanted to go over and just the results of it. So the first one, when people were asked or respondents were asked in general, what tends to be, what tends to cause you the most stress in your life? So 50% of Canadians between the age of 18 and 34, say that money is their biggest stressor. That drops to 40% for Canadians that are 35 and older. Other stressors would include things like health relationship and work. But I thought it was interesting just to see the discrepancy between those two.

Obviously, health went up in terms of stressor, the older you are, because clearly, you know, the more health issues that you get as you get older. But it was interesting in terms of seeing those younger Canadians. And I'm sure people have heard and seen those articles that or no recent graduates that just can't find a job in their field. And they have to continue that part-time work or just work minimum wage because that's the only thing that they can't. And there's a few things in that survey that kind of worry me when it comes to younger Canadians. Yeah, I mean, the one thing I'm surprised is that job stability in terms of the fears was like as low as it is with all, you know, the benefits. potential AI disruption, I guess you could say in terms of employment. I mean,

even if it's, even if you say it's overblown, like AI won't replace as many jobs as they expect. Like the headlines are still out there that it's going to replace a ton of jobs. Like I can't remember who said it. I don't know if it was Bill Gates or the, the Nvidia CEO or yeah, I can't remember which one, but they pretty much said like one of the only, some of the only industries to survive will be like construction and healthcare, things like that. Yeah. I can't remember who that was. But I mean, I guess when you're overwhelmed with larger issues, like that you need to survive, like housing and food, maybe there's just not enough room to, to worry about your job at all. But yeah, this was a, it's a pretty interesting report. I'll chime in as we go.

Okay, sounds good. Yeah, the next question I wanted to highlight. So it asked respondents, which aspects of your finances cause you stress? And this one, the way it was as there, you could choose multiple answers. So the number of, One was bill payments slash expenses at 37%. Up to 40% for younger Canadians, though. Second was saving enough for retirement at 36% and debt and saving enough for major purchases rounded up the top four at 29 and 31% respectively. So not surprising here that there is a pretty significant amount of stress relating to

you know, paying your bills, saving for retirement or getting rid of debt because Canadians are very indebted as we all know. So not surprising, but I just kind of thought it confirmed. Of course, it's a relatively small sample. I think it's 2002 people that were surveyed for this and it's pretty wide ranging in ages. But I think it does give a pretty decent picture here. Yeah, I mean, especially on the younger generation. Obviously, the numbers are much more dramatic when you get to younger people. But I mean, obviously when the cost of living rises as much, you know, survival type stuff, like I mentioned bills, all that type of stuff is what's going to stress you out the most. I don't know how they get it under control. I think it's kind of, I mean, I've talked quite a bit on the

podcast about how, you know, my opinion on the cost of living crunch and how the, I think the pandemic did permanent damage. I think in terms of, you know, people on on lower wages being able to afford things. And it's going to be interesting moving forward, like how they try to mitigate this. I don't, I don't know what they do in terms of like the younger generation trying to make things more affordable. It's like even if you think of my, so I moved into my house three years ago and my property taxes have gone up 50% over those three years. That's crazy. Yeah.

It's wild. No, exactly. Like I mean, at the end of the day, look, I think it's something that we have as a society to, uh, maybe we need to be more self-sufficient. I'm not quite sure what the answer is, but the more this discrepancy happens between and the more it's polarized between the haves and have-nots. And unfortunately, it seems like the haves are the older generation and the haves-not tend to be the younger generation. The more of a powdercade becomes and the more extreme or maybe that's not the right word to use, but the more there's a risk for populism to rise and go on either the far right or left, right? I think people tend to like deem, or not people, but you kind of see those little clans which

will demonize far right or demonize far left. I mean, at the end of the day, if you're on the far end of either spectrum, usually there's, that's where the real issues start happening. But the next question here is when asked, they ask, respond that what if any external forces are having a direct impact on your financial related stress? So this one was interesting. The number one was, you mentioned it, elevated grocery prices came in at 64%. The inflation's impact on the cost of goods and services came in at 55%, and everything else was 32% or less. So I just wanted to highlight how much there was a difference between those two and everything else. And of course, it's an answer that people could choose multiple answers.

So that's why it's more than 100%. there were some where it was just one answer, like the first one we went over, but this one was a multiple one. So I'm not too surprising. Any comments on that one? No, I mean, yeah, groceries. It's going to be, especially with how fast they're increasing. It's no doubt going to be the number one worry. Yeah, exactly.

So the next one here would be the survey revealed that 50% of Canadians have lost sleep over financial worries. So that reached 59% for Canadians between 18, and 54. So again, the younger you are, the more you are likely to be stressed about your finances. And of course, 18 to 54 is a pretty wide range here, but it drops to 36% for 55 plus. So it is interesting that maybe as you get older too, even if you're not rich, you start worrying more about your health. I don't know. But it was interesting that people in that age group were far less likely to worry about financials worries. I mean, if you think of that generation, they have like the largest, they have a monumental, like, share of the total wealth here in Canada. Yeah. I mean, if you're 55 plus, you've probably got paid off mortgage, probably a retirement fund, whereas, you know, people who are younger than that are probably worried about paying their mortgage, paying rent. So, yeah, I'm, I'm actually surprised that it's 36%. I would have figured it was lower, but yeah. No, no, exactly. Having cash on hand is essential for any business. Traditional business accounts hit you with high fees while paying little to no interest on the cash you need for day-to-day operations. That was our experience too, until we switched to the new EQBank business account.

Now, every dollar earns high interest with no monthly fees and no minimum balance. You also get free everyday transactions like EFTs, bill payments, mobile check deposits, and 50 outgoing and 100 incoming free interrache transfers. And to sign up, quick and fully online. No branch visits because, let's be honest, no business owner has time for that. We use it for our own business and it's the first account that actually helps our money work harder while keeping operations simple. Check it out today at EQBank.ca slash business. There is an old saying in investing.

It's not about timing the market, but time in the market. The most successful investors aren't usually the ones trying to catch every top and bottom. They're the ones who spend the most time in the market. I've been a quest trade user for over five years, and the reason I stick with them is that they remove the friction of regular investing. With no commissions on stock and ETF trades, you don't have to wait until you have thousands of dollars saved up to make a move. You can contribute small amounts regularly

and keep your portfolio growing consistently, removing the stress of trying to time the market. And they keep making it easier to build a well-rounded portfolio. Soon, you'll be able to trade precious metals through Questrade, giving you even more ways to diversify. Questrade makes the whole process seamless, allow you to focus on what really matters your investment strategy, not trying to avoid fees.

Ready to invest? Head over to Questrade.com, open and fund your account with code TCI and receive $50. Conditions apply. Calling all DIY, do-it-yourself investors. Blossom is an essential app for you. It has been blowing up with now more than 50,000 Canadians plus and growing who are using the app.

Every time I go on there, I am shocked. The engagement is amazing. This is a really vibrant community that they're building. And people share their portfolios, their trades, their investment ideas in real time. And it's all built on the concept of transparency because brokerage accounts are linked. And then once you link your brokerage account, you can get in-depth portfolio insights, track your dividends. And there's other stuff like learning duolingo style education lessons that are completely free. You can search up Blossom social in the app store and join the community

today. I'm on there. I encourage you go on there and follow me, search me up. Some of the YouTubers and influencers and podcasters that you might know, I bet you there are. already on there. People are just on there talking, sharing their investment ideas and using the analytics tools. So go ahead, blossom social in the app store and I'll see you there. So the next question here that was asked to respond then. So what is your greatest financial regret? That is, if you could go back in time and do things differently, what would that be? Steps have you, yeah, so what would that be? So save more and invest more came in at 20% each, spend less came in at 14% while getting a better job came in at 9%.

So it's interesting that save more and invest more came in at 20%. Obviously, we're the Canadian investor podcast. So hopefully we do encourage people to invest more because I think at the end of the day, and it's interesting that it's a regret, but people that are probably respondents here, they may not be super sophisticated in terms of investing. but they're also, I'm sure there's a lot of aware people, self-aware and, you know, very intelligent people that are seeing like, you know what, if I had invested in the S&P 500 10 years ago instead of spending money I didn't have on X, Y, and Z, I have way more money right now.

So I think people do realize that that investing does make sure that they keep up with a high cost of living and not doing so as you're almost robbing yourself in the future. Yeah, I think the interesting thing is like the 14% spend less because I think there's like a lot of a lot of people who are not in a position where they don't need to worry stuff about stuff like this will kind of point to frivolous spending when it comes to, you know, younger generations that can't really get ahead. I mean, obviously you think, you know, one of the most common ones is stuff like food delivery, stuff like that, like just excess spending. But I mean, I think that's kind of missing the forest for the trees overall. A lot of the things that are

driving costs right now are not discretionary at all. Their kind of core cost of living issues, like groceries, housing, insurance, utility. So I mean, a lot of people knock on like Gen Z spending a couple hundred bucks a month on food delivery. I don't think that's really, it's kind of the issue that's pointed at, but I don't think that's like the situation of, you know, the, the, the country overall, which is why you see like people want to save more, but, you know, when it's 14%, that means like a lot of people are not really, they probably can't find ways to spend less because they really aren't spending all that much. It's just so expensive to live. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, there is, sometimes though it is something you have to make a

conscious decision, right? It's not possible for everyone. And I've heard stories of people having to choose between eating themselves and feeding their kids. So they, you know, parents, they don't eat themselves because that's what they have to do. Clearly, you're not in a position to really spend less. If you're doing that, you're already spending the bare bones. But the Uber Eats example, that is more of, okay, you could be spending less, but you choose convenience over spending less, which is fine, but then you have to realize that what you're doing now will essentially impact you in the future

and may create some more trouble in the future where you may have to, make a tough decision where you have to choose whether you, you know, you eat your full calories or not and Uber Eats doesn't even enter the conversation. Interestingly enough, though, like a lot of the, I mean, this is anecdotal, but the majority I people, majority of people I talk to who use that type of stuff, it's because they can't afford a vehicle. The cost of actually using those delivery services is, yeah, it's cheaper than the gas, the insure it's the vehicle, all that type of stuff. So I mean, obviously some people abuse it. But

I mean, again, that's just like a. No, that's a fair point. I hadn't thought about it that way. But just interesting to see that. The last one I wanted to highlight here. Again, there's a lot of questions I didn't go over. Some of them focus more on just a financial planning aspect. Of course, that's, you know, it's a financial planning Canada. So clearly that's what they want to highlight. I'm just using it a bit more as a general sense of, you know, people's well-being. financially. And the last one here is just looking here when the last question, well, this question I want to highlight, when thinking about an obstacle preventing you from taking control of your financial situation, to what extent do you agree or disagree with the following? So I'm just

going to go over a few here. So I am burdened by the cost, the high cost of living. So 69% of people actually agreed on net here. I'm afraid of making the wrong financial. decision, 53% of people agreed. And for the most part, I would say that these are, they tend to just be worse the younger you are. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're between, they, they break it down between 18 and 54 and then 55 plus. I don't know why they don't breaking down a bit more. It's probably more because their sample is 2000. So it might be a bit harder to get a good sample for smaller age groups, but nonetheless, it still paints a pretty interesting picture here. And then you have, after paying necessary bill in expenses, I don't have enough money to save

invest or pay down debt. So half of the respondents agreed with that. Again, 57% for the younger cohort, 40% for the 55 plus. I prioritize other aspect of my life over finances. Again, 45% agree with that. higher for the younger generation, which I think probably makes sense. You're younger. You want to live more experiences. So I've definitely been there. I procrastinate due to stress or anxiety. So I guess this is related to financial procrastination. So this one is 42%. So I'll just finish your last two here. I'm burdened by unforeseen major expenses. 41% agreed. Again, big discrepancy in the age group here, 48 to 31% with the younger versus the older. And then I avoid thinking about my financial situation because it feels overwhelming.

And that one was 40% agree, but 50% on the younger cohort and 25% 55 plus. So this one I just wanted to highlight because I think it just gets back to what we were talking about, where you see like really a massive gap between the younger generation and the older generation here. And as I'm 40, so I guess I would fall into that category. But again, I'm thinking more about my daughter. You have young boys. I do worry a little bit how the future will look for them, seeing this kind of stuff. But again, they're young enough that I think there is time for things to improve.

But clearly sentiment is definitely not great when it comes for younger generations here. Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, this kind of stuff has long lasting impacts on the economy, the market. I mean, like eventually these younger generations are going to be the main drivers of the economy. So you're going to get companies that are fighting over a much smaller pool of disposable income. Like everybody, everybody is traded down when, you know, when inflation ramp back up a few years ago. And I don't think we're going to see a trade up. And I mean, if you have entire generations who are unable to save and invest and eventually these generations are going to hit their. peak earnings ears still not be able to save invest. So like, you know, you have less money flowing into the markets, but you will eventually have, you know, people are more reliant on social programs, CPP, OAS, all that type of stuff. If you have no money to invest. So yeah, it's, it's pretty grim. I don't know how they turn it around. I mean, a lot of the, I mean, I think, I think a lot of it will be just training kids for the right jobs, right? I think my generation probably yours as well.

There was a lot of emphasis at least when I was in high school that you need to go to university. And that's it. Not a lot of emphasis on trades. I mean, you went into trades, but I can definitely vouch for that that I saw some friends in high school that clearly should have gone into things that were more manual, like more trades oriented that went to university. And, you know, some of them may have graduated. They have a job now.

but they would have been much better into a more kind of manual type of job. And right now is probably the time for those who aren't, you know, maybe like 13, 14 and under, they're probably the ones that will be able to benefit from that shift or at least, not necessarily benefit, but at least be able to go into the type of work that will be more in demand and less likely to be disrupted by AI for years to come. Yeah. I mean, there's a difficulty. in that regard to because when I first started in the trades in 2009, I think my wage went down over the course of 10 years. So I mean, yeah, it's a difficult situation. It all depends

demand, right? In terms of, yeah, demand, labor available. So that's, that's all dependent. I mean, you can counteract with, I know some people that were plumbers, electricians, and carpenters that just kind of completely crushed it during the pandemic, right? Because it was just, yeah. Yeah, so there's definitely some cyclicality. And obviously, you'll need people in schools that will be able to train them, the younger generation. But I think that is where I do have a bit more open. Hopefully as a society will kind of be able to foresee what kind of skill sets will be required in 10, 15, 20 years. Because I think there's definitely a bit of a lag that we're seeing right now. But interesting survey to look at. I know it's a bit different than kind of the investing, but it's more on the financial literacy side. But I think it just gives a good pulse on where Canadians are standing, obviously, small sample. Clearly some questions more aimed towards financial planning aspect. But nonetheless, I think some definitely provide us some food for thought. Definitely.

I have nothing more. Do you want to dig in to the telecoms? Let's move on here. Your TD report on telecoms, and then we'll wrap it up. Yeah, so the telecoms are back in the headlines. Not in a good way. they haven't been in the headlines in a good way for three, four years now, but TD Bank released a report.

I mean, I must say I like the telecoms more and more. Like, my bill is shrinking. Yes. And I go over that. Yeah, it's, uh, and I don't think the shrinking is going to stop. But no, okay. TD released a report, I think it was late last week, that they've downgraded every telecom to a hold and slash price targets on all of them.

And this is interesting because. Oh, man. Just a quick note for people who are not familiar with how analysts grade companies, typically a hold is synonym to sell. Yeah. Like, because they will never unless, like, it's something so obvious that it would be malpractice for them to say hold when the company is clearly like going bankrupt. Usually, like, as bearish as they can get is a whole.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, the sell side industry is terrible for that type of stuff. Like they, I kind of go over that. Like, they do not turn bearish unless they absolutely have to. Like, go easy, for example. Yes. That's an example.

Yeah. Just, like, I know I don't want to rehash go easy. It's just that's an example of how bad things have to get for sell side analysts basically, say, to sell or, like, give ridiculously low price targets. That's usually what it takes. Just so I just want to be clear because we try to be as impartial as we can when we look at companies and we review earnings, even the companies that we old. But these sell side analysts, I mean, they're for the most part. I mean, I'm sure they try their best, but they have vested interest. They have career risk if they're being too bearish on a company.

There's more money to be made by being bullish. I'll tell you that much, especially for the bank. Yeah. But the interesting thing here is this is the first time in 30 years that the analyst that is covering them has not had a buy target on at least one. And he's covered the entire, like, he's covered the entire sector for three decades. He's never once not had a buy target on at least one of them. So again, we had talked about, like, I'm not a huge fan of. You must have raised his phone bill. Yeah. He must have raised his phone. He's, he's going to go to Kudo after. But, uh,

I mean, again, like I, this would have been way deep in the vault, but I did that episode on like sell side targets and. Yeah. You know, they're generally late to the party. Generally when, you know, they flip the script to hold that's often, you know, close to the bottom. But this, this, I don't know this analyst in particular, but apparently he has spent 30 years in the space analyzing Canadian telecom company. So, I mean, it probably warrants a bit more attention. And full disclosure, I guess I do own tellus. It was kind of a short term play for me that I bought for a bump investment.

I mean, in hindsight, I got a bit too greedy last year and didn't end up selling when I got to the to the mid-20s. But the main reference in this report is the pricing wars. I tend to agree. And I've always kind of wondered about telecom churn rates. Like, TELUS is not lying about having industry leading churn. They do, like, they have the lowest churn rate. The thing is, like, it's kind of a vanity metric. I mean, if your, if your churn rate is low and your ARPUs are maintained or increased, increasing. It's a good thing. But I mean, when your turn rate is low, but your ARPUs are declining, you're just reducing. ARPUs is average revenue per user. Yeah. You're just keeping people by lowering prices. So he kind of mentions this. He says it's a, a negative repricing cycle. And he also mentioned like many smaller brands, kudo, Fido, Virgin, all that type of stuff are offering pricing models that include more data and better calling rates for less than. half of the current telecoms ARPUs. So, well, most of them, yeah, like most of them are owned by the big telecos anyways, right?

Those like, uh, well, isn't kudo owned by Telis? I know Virgin is independent. Fido is owned by one of them. I don't know if Kudelis, yeah, Kudoh. Tellis owns Kudo. Fido is owned by Rogers. And then I believe Virgin is owned by Bell. I thought Virgin was like independent.

No. Oh, I think it's owned by Bell. Oh. So they're all, yeah, they're just their, they're kind of more cost effective ones. Yeah. But the problem is they're still kind of almost cannibalizing them. Yeah. Exactly.

So the analyst ramped up expected ARPU declines from 1.5% to 2.5% across the industry. And the one interesting thing here is Quebecer and Freedom Mobile are accounting for 55% of industry additions. yet they hold less than 10% of the market share. So. Which is the same company, by the way. Quebec all owns freedom. Yeah. Didn't they buy them?

Not too long. Yeah. They bought them. Yeah. So I think you kind of have to look at it as like is the big three's moat going away. Because the big three's moat was it was because of regulations. Like it was it was a lot of regulations that kind of made it, you know, impossible for others to enter the space.

So, you know, are we kind of. seeing that eroding and there's going to be further pressure placed on the telecoms this year because I'm pretty sure I don't know if it's at the end of the year or the middle of the year they're not going to be able to charge you that ridiculous activation fee they used to charge to get into a contract it'd be like $70 or $80 so they're not going to be able to do that they will no longer be able to charge you a cancellation fee I didn't dig into what this actually means I'm sure they're still able to charge you for the remainder left on your contract but there used to be an additional fee too for getting out of it.

So I mean, this goes back to the days when they used to, like, they used to be able to charge you to unlock your device. And regulators like got rid of that. So they're kind of hammering down on the moat here. And I, and I mean, again, the interesting element here, as I mentioned, is is the competition angle. I mean, Quebec is is adding a ton of subscribers is actually growing ARPU. So this was a. They're being very aggressive with their offering where they're pricing for sure. I've seen, I've seen some advertisement around.

Yeah. So there's a very interesting element here. So there's a mandate that allows freedom to use the big three networks. So this deal actually expires in 2030, apparently. Like, I don't know this. I'm taking it from his word. But I mean, their model is pretty much reliant on regulatory backing again. Like if regulators don't maybe force the telecom companies to extend this deal,

like you'd imagine growth would completely stall. out. But yeah, I mean, I think there's a big question as to, you know, again, I think the moat is under question. Like, I think even if regulatory, all the regulatory stuff went away, like, I don't think there's not a ton of competition because the infrastructure is just way too expensive to build out. But, I mean, three years ago, we had the highest mobile phone plans of all developed countries. Now we're starting to see like $25, $30 phone plans. So it's going to be interesting to see how churn rates react to pretty much frictionless cancellation. I mean, they can't charge you the cancellation fee. They can't charge you the activation on a new device. And all this will do

is probably accelerate the race to the bottom in terms of pricing. Because, you know, somebody who has a $50 phone plan and can get it for $40 somewhere else, but the company was able, you know, you'd have to pay a cancellation fee and $80 or whatever, maybe going to a new, buyer you probably didn't. But I mean, he expects seven straight quarters of ARPU decline. So you're talking like two straight years. So yeah, it's kind of, it's a tough environment for the telecoms. Like I think a lot of them are are cheap enough, I guess that I don't know.

It's not like these companies are extremely expensive, but it's kind of hard to see. Well, just to give you an idea how bad it is from our Poo, so the average revenue per user. So it's around $57. If we go back, so that's a sharp decline from, I would say, 22, 20, 23, where it was 60 in terms of ARPU. But then if you go back all the way to like early 2020, 2019, you're basically flat and then, you know, think about a little bit of inflation that we've had since. Yeah. And interest expenses tacked onto the debt, all that type of stuff. Yeah. So I think Chad just shows right there how tough it's been. And then you tap, you add on the lack of population growth in Canada, which was a big reason why I think they've done, they did so well. I mean,

some of the best earning years in terms of ARPU were literally during those kind of peak population growth that we saw in Canada, 21, 22, 23, 22, 23, especially. So it's kind of interesting from that standpoint is because, you know, if you don't have population growth, you just like your customer base is you know. Everybody's got a phone. Like everybody has a phone now. The only way you're adding more customers is by children becoming old enough to get a device or you're bringing other people in. And, you know, there's, it's a pretty tough environment.

I think like the one question here is the TELUS dividend. So he predicted a 30% dividend cut, which. Okay. I mean, if I were to guess, like if I were to actually make a bet, I'd probably go like 6040 in terms of them cutting versus not cutting. Like they're trying, they're eventually going to take TELUS Health public, I think, which would probably allow them to maybe raise some capital kind of, you know, better themselves that way. But there's also the element that they completely pulled the rug under many, many investors in terms of TELUS International. So that was an absolute disaster. It was the biggest tech IPO in history back when it IPOed in 2021.

I think it was. And yeah, it lost like 90% of its value, I want to say, 85, 90% of its value. And then TELUS just bought it back, took it back private. So, I mean, TELUS kind of made out like bandits. But you have something like that happened? Like how, you know, promising is it going to be to spin off something else like three, four years later? So I don't know.

It's crazy. It's down like almost cut in a half since Dallas, uh, 20, 22. Yeah, tell us. All the telecoms have gotten beaten up fairly badly. Again, like, I don't know, usually when stuff comes out like this, like the only analyst to cover these companies, first time he's only, he's had holds on them in 30 years.

I mean, yeah. Generally like sell side sentiment that I kind of take as some sort of a bottom, but I don't know, I think it would like, I don't really care about the, you know, whatever, it may be nine and a half percent yield on TELUS. I mean, obviously, if you think the bottom is in, the yield does become attractive, but I don't really care if they cut the dividend, I think it would be better for the company. I mean, if you look to companies like 3M, you look to companies like AT&T, like they're, they struggled all the way up until they cut the dividend and then the stock prices have done quite well. B.C. are not so much the same, but that's more so because. of the long list of things I just issued or I just mentioned but yeah it's I don't know I don't know how these companies get back on track and I say this

How long has it been since BC cut the dividend like a year now or almost? Probably a year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was in the spring maybe last year. Yeah. Yeah, because it was your bold prediction for 2025.

Yeah, I mean, Dave, so yeah, they're actually up 12% over the last year excluding dividends. So they, It just goes to show that sometimes the right decision just to cut that dividend. It might also, it might be a smart position for TELUS too just because that, you know, why would not give you some more flexibility? Yeah.

When the business is not doing well, you've highlighted, like we've talked about all the reasons why there's more competition. There's just less customers that while the customer base is not really growing anymore, so they're fighting with lowering their pricing to try and poach customers or retain their own because they feel that, and rightfully so, it's better to keep one of your customers at a lower price than lose them all together because you have a lot of these fixed costs that are not going to change. So you rather get the customer for $50 a month versus $75 they used to pay versus

completely losing them. So all that applies. But I think I honestly think Tellis and I haven't looked at Rogers recently, but they probably would benefit to just be just more prudent on the dividend side. To me, it's just you're prudent and then when the business can actually handle it, you can increase the dividend later down the line. Yeah, Rogers, I don't think is an issue because they don't really, Rogers doesn't really care about the dividend all that much. Like they don't grow it at all or, I mean, they more so focus on acquisitions. Yeah, on the Blue Jays. Yeah. Well, they made it. Oh yeah, that was another thing.

The operating income from that segment for Rogers doubled in one quarter because of the Blue Jay's run. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, they have a banking CEO now in place for TELUS. Like, you know, banks are pretty prudent when it comes to dividends. Yeah. The only other thing is he just bought, I think it was just under $4 million in shares. Okay. So I don't know. Is he going to buy four million worth of shares and cut the dividend? Who knows? Yeah, we'll have to see. But anything else you wanted to add there? But I thought that was pretty interesting. I know TELCOs are still pretty popular because of the dividend, but I think it's just a good reminder that even though a certain industry may have been kind of the consistent dividend payer, the blue chip and no questions asked, you also have to

realize that sometimes times change, right? And I think that's what's happening for these telecos, right? Yeah. There's no such thing as no questions asked. You always got to ask questions. Yeah, you got always have to ask questions. On that, I just want to thank everyone for listening. Make sure that you keep an eye on our feed because there should be a new episode and an additional episode coming out this week. So I'm interviewing someone this week. I'll leave it as a surprise. So just make sure that I was going to say that in, but I might as well keep it as a surprise. So we'll be talking about kind of big picture or macro.

Been on the podcast before. So make sure you tune in. That will be most likely coming out on Wednesday. So just keep an eye for the feed. And if not, Dan and I will be back on Thursday for another episode. Thank you everyone for listening. We love the support. You can find us on Dan and I on Twitter. We're also on Joint TCI if you're looking to ask us some question. We're posting some regular content on YouTube as well. So lots of different places to find us. And thank you again for listening.

The Canadian Investor Podcast should not be construed as investment or financial advice. The host and guest featured may own securities or assets discussed on this podcast. Always do your own due diligence or consult with a financial professional before making any financial or investment decisions.